Forum:Dragonball Movie

Forum → Dragonball Movie

Post

Hey everybody. With the new Dragonball movie quickly approaching, there's lots of exciting things happening for the Dragonball franchise on almost a daily basis. We've got an article for the film itself, but I think we have room on the wiki to cover a lot more. People who don't know about the wiki are going to be search Google for Dragonball topics specifically related to the movie, and I think it would be great if they found us in the search results.

I noticed the discussion at Talk:James Marsters about how that type of an article is probably better suited for Wikipedia. The way it reads now, I agree. However, I think there are ways we can make pages about the people involved in the making of the film more relevant to Dragonball Wiki. Basically, we can strip out all of the biographical data and replace it with material only relevant to the subject's connection to the wiki. So for example, the page for James Marsters could include pictures of him in the role of Piccolo, interview excerpts of him talking about playing the role, embedded videos featuring him as or talking about Piccolo and whatever we can find.

There are lots of pictures for the movie starting to surface on various sites, so one cool thing to have here would be a comprehensive collection of promotional photos, trailer screengrabs, posters, concept art and other imagery collected into a gallery easy to browse and add to. Another fun thing that the folks over at the Twilight Saga Wiki did was to make a list of all the differences between the book and the movie. A similar comparison article here about the changes between classic Dragonball and the live action movie would be really fun to work on and informative for people to read.

What do you guys think? —Scott (talk) 00:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

That sounds like a reasonable compromise about the actors. One thing that could be clarified a bit is where exactly the line will be drawn for who gets an article and who doesn't. Does this go for voice actors too? Writers? Etc. --  talk contr 07:50, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

I think that drawing the line at top-billed actors, or something along those lines, would be a good starting point. That's not to say that we shouldn't have an article about one of the lesser known actors if we have something good and/or interesting to say about them. I'd say the same should apply for writers. The wiki has an opportunity to shed some light on individuals who don't always get the glary they deserve for their behind-the-scenes credits. I've spent a lot of time on Muppet Wiki where we cover everything that's related to the topic of the wiki. Without that freedom, we'd never have ended up with great articles for someone like Muppet Show writer Don Hinkley. There's not alot of information about him on the internet, so we've kinda become the definitive source. Dragonball Wiki has the shot at tapping into this unclaimed area for people associated with the franchise. I think it would be great to have comprehensive data on Dragonball-related people that no one else is covering on the Web. —Scott (talk) 15:57, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Seeing as this conversation has stood for a month, I'd like to nominate this for official wiki policy. Which means that the community has decided to cover movie-related content so long as it all has something directly to do with the feature film being released to theatres in April. That way we can eliminate any potential confusion about coverage for newcomers. What do you think? —Scott (talk) 19:05, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Basically, if it's related to authorized DB media, it can be included. --  talk contr 08:28, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

Cool. So with that out of the way, I think it would be a good idea to break out the sections of List of actors in live action Dragon Ball films back to their own articles. There's a few good reasons why this would be a better way to go. 1) Google will index the separate pages better giving us a better ranking. 2) As this isn't Wikipedia and we can have articles for whatever we want, there's really no need to lump information together like this. We can easily maintain pages for each actor as described by policy. —Scott (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

I gave my opinion about this to Eulalia459678 not too long ago:

"What Nonoitall said in the forums was one of the reasons why I merged the actors into a single article. As it stood, there was little precedent as to who got an article and who didn't. There isn't much room for growth in articles of real life actors; because this isn't Wikipedia the articles were singled down to being not much longer than stubs, having a lead, an image and a quote or two. If articles for actors portraying Dragon Ball characters in a non-canon release exist, then does this mean articles should exist for voice actors who have contributed to source material? Either way such article entries would not grow much longer than stubs; there are only so many voice actors whose articles could be written with a fair degree of length. I figured the only notable actors were the ones who portrayed characters present in source material (thus eliminating the possibility of articles for [several actors who portray characters] created by Chow's writers). There are two other live-action films based on the franchise as well, so this meant the list of actors who portray Dragon Ball characters in film would not be limited to actors who portray Dragon Ball characters in Dragon Ball: Evolution. This helps to make the question of who gets an article less debatable." Storm talk – projects 22:28, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi Vixen! Maybe we have different definitions of what a stub is, but the articles for actors look pretty significant and have the potential to grow. I don't know as much about the voice actors, but having them on the wiki and crawled by Google increases the chance that someone will find them and help expand them in the future. Really, that's what the whole wiki process is all about: pooling together the cumulative knowledge of many for the betterment of the topic. They certainly can't do any harm and can only offer the potential for growth to anyone who sees fit in working on them. —Scott (talk) 22:33, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

It's kind of a tough call. Like I said, I think the information can be included as long as it's DB-related. As far as whether a certain actor deserves a whole article, IMHO, I'd say it depends on just how much DB-related content there is to write about him/her (much like any other subject on the wiki). If we can scrounge up enough material that it won't just be a quote and a photo gallery, I can see articles for actors working. If we can't dig up more than that, then I'd opt to put the actor in a list. --  talk contr 11:14, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

That's interesting. Don't you think quotes of him talking about the movie and pictures of him as the character would be what people are expecting to see on a Dragon Ball Wiki? My intention here is that people are going to get really excited about the new movie as the release date gets closer. They know certain familar actors like Justin Chatwin, Emmy Rossum, Chow Yun-Fat and James Marsters are in it. So they're going to search Google for dragonball james marsters to see what they can find. If we've got an article for James Marsters, Google's going to give us a higher rank than if he's just mentioned on a list. Higher rank means more people find the wiki and ultimately join the community to help make it better. —Scott (talk) 18:18, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

From what I've been observing over the months, more fans than the latter have something of a counter-excitement, or disappointment over Chow's adaptation (his choice to leave absent the more flamboyant villains, why Mai can shapeshift, etc). I'm just not sure how much emphasis should be put on a film that from what I can see, isn't on an epic level of hopes among the series' fanbase (unlike Yo! Son Goku). You may find my idea opinion-based, and I'd have to agree, but I've considered the reception of the film among the series' fans in my opinion of how to treat it, so it's less one-sided than it might come off as. But that's why we're having this discussion! Storm talk – projects 18:36, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I can respect that. A lot of people have different opinions about the quality of the end product. I guess we'll know for sure when the movie comes out. But since we've decided to cover movie content, I think it's important to cater to both sides. How about a compromise? The movie versions of the characters are no doubt going to differ from the traditional versions of the characters. I think separate pages for them would serve the fanbase well by pointing out the differences between the two versions. That way the pages for the original versions of the characters don't have to be tainted by the movie versions and the wiki will still make out good with Google for having pages called Master Roshi (Chow Yun-Fat), Bulma (Emmy Rossum) and Lord Piccolo (James Marsters). It's a win-win situation for both sides. —Scott (talk) 18:43, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't have too much free time at the moment, but I thought I'd get out a quick response for the discussion. I think that is a compromise that could really work out. Search engine queries like the one you suggested would still return the appropriate pages (such as "Lord Piccolo (James Marsters)"), and articles for Dragonball: Evolution versions of characters could even be used to support their actor or another actor's insight of that character. Sounds like a great solution to me! Storm talk – projects 18:52, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

I also like that idea. That way we can give the articles a little more meat by discussing the character being portrayed (and the differences between the live action and original portrayals). And like you said we get Google hits too. :-) --  talk contr 02:23, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Great! As you can see, I already started in on Bulma (Emmy Rossum) and Lord Piccolo (James Marsters). Any reason why we shouldn't have galleries? People like seeing picture galleries. —Scott (talk) 03:06, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

I just don't see how galleries have any encyclopedic value. There are countless Dragon Ball fansites that host image galleries, and more often then not they have much better set-ups than we can offer because of the wiki's <gallery> markup. Galleries look okay sometimes but not when the images are too excessive or the inclusion of a gallery is the only thing that differentiates a stub from a long article. It seems to me that people who want to see as many pictures of actors playing the roles as they can find can look up the dozen fansites that are following just the upcoming film alone. Storm talk – projects 03:19, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

Okay, I can see that point of view. On the wikis I've worked with, galleries have proven an essential element for people looking for information about their topic. Fans like seeing galleries of pictures, although I agree wikicode doesn't exactly have the best execution of that. Is there any circumstance under which a gallery would be more acceptable on those pages? The <gallery> tag is limited, but there are a few tweaks we can make to it. For example, we can change the number of columns and the size of the thumbnails. What do other folks think? I want to make sure the community has a chance to voice their opinion as well. —Scott (talk) 22:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

For example, take a look at the gallery at the bottom of Eddie Blake. —Scott (talk) 18:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't really see a whole lot of encyclopedic value in the galleries either, but if it's something that people really want, perhaps the gallery could be on a separate page? (Something like Gallery of Lord Piccolo (James Marsters) images or Lord Piccolo (James Marsters)/gallery?) We still don't have a whole lot to write about the characters, and in the articles' present state, the galleries seemed a bit overpowering. --  talk contr 03:14, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

That's a cool idea. Under the main character picture, we could link to the character gallery or something. —Scott (talk) 03:28, 22 January 2009 (UTC)